by Shelly Crane
“Don’t even try to act like you don’t like us,” Fletch barked before plowing between Soph and me, breaking us apart. Roddy followed suit, looking at us both like he didn’t know if he was in trouble or not but he was always with his brother. I could do nothing but shake my head.
I looked at Soph, ready for more talk if need be. I’d convince her until she understood, but she had a little smile on her face. She grabbed my jacket front. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” I came a little closer. “I’m up for more convincing.” I put all the innuendo in my voice I thought was appropriate…without getting smacked.
She shook her head with a small smile. “Nope. All better.” She paused and I thought it was for dramatic effect, but I realized she was preparing herself more than me for her next statement. “You make everything better,” she whispered, like she suffered saying it.
I lifted her face once more, tilting her chin, making her face me and her fears all at once. “Is that so bad?”
She shook her head. “I’m realizing that it’s not so bad at all.” She lifted up on her toes and kissed my lips once, her warm mouth such a contrast to my cold lips, and then smiled as she turned to catch up with the twins. She looked at my stunned figure over her shoulder. “Let’s go! Stop being gaga for me and get a move on!”
I chuckled and ran after her. When I reached her she wrapped her arm around mine and put her head on my shoulder. I noticed how the twins kept looking back to check on us. Correction—they were checking on Sophelia. Those two guardians of hers weren’t quite as bobble-headed as they acted.
With Soph and me wearing our appearance scramblers and nobody knowing who the twins were to care, I didn’t really think it was going to be a problem that we had caused a spectacle back there, even though that video was all over the screens and the world net by now. In honesty, I could have told Sophelia that we needed to take it somewhere else and she would have, I had no doubt, but no, I felt like I needed to play her hero, be the good guy, the leading man in her life, and that’s why when I saw the three sentries coming, I was surprised and unsurprised at the same time. I sighed and cleared my throat.
“Soph,” I said quietly. “On my count, we run. To the left.”
She didn’t question me. One more tick mark in her favor.
She took a deep breath, trying not to move her eyes around and give away that we had been alerted to their presence.
“Okay.” Her grip tightened on my arm.
“Knucklehead brothers,” I said a little louder.
When they turned back to scold me, I shook my head and ticked my head left just enough for them to see. “To the left. On the count of three.”
The look on their faces surprised me. It was all business. No jokes or What do you means. Apparently when it came to Sophelia’s safety, we agreed, no questions asked. They nodded once.
We turned left down the produce market district. It was actually perfect. There were granite stands out on the edge of the street. Small, slow spinning holographic signs sat above each bin of vacuum-sealed packaged fruits and vegetables, which half of the people on this planet couldn’t even afford, telling us what each bin contained.
Some of them were putting new products out, or putting them up, their bots wheeling out the granite stands like they weighed nothing at all, or two bots at once walked the stand out in tandem. I pulled Sophelia by the hand, weaving us around the people who were oblivious to the things around, the people who just focused on their next meal, maybe getting something special every now and then, staying out of trouble, and paying their taxes on time.
There were shoppers on both sides and it was easy to get lost in the crowd. Or so I thought.
I peeked over my shoulder as casually as my slamming heart would allow and saw them not more than thirty steps behind us. Were they following us? Sophelia and I had our face scramblers on, so I was confused why they would be. I had yanked us all out of the path of the Militia because that’s naturally what you do—you don’t tempt fate on this planet for no reason—but now they were behind us. It made me itchy.
I had seen the twins following close behind. I knew they’d follow as I pulled Sophelia into the split of the street. It veered left into the fork of the street. When I looked back, the guards were heading to the right of the fork, following the crowd.
I let a huge breath go, feeling relief all the way to my bones.
Soph shook my hand making me look over at her face upturned to mine, her cheeks a little flushed from our quick pace. She said, her voice lilting on the edge as she barely held back a laugh, “Are we out of the line of fire yet, or are you going to keep crushing my fingers?”
“Oh,” I loosened my grip, “sorry.”
She shook her head, her red hair moving around her face. “No need to be. Are we safe now?”
“I think so.” I continued to look at her as we walked the street full of people. I didn’t see a one of them. She looked around at the shops and buildings, like she’d never seen them. And I realized she hadn’t. “You’ve never been to this side, have you?”
She shook her head, a little tipped up lip. “No,” she said softly, but I still somehow heard her. Or maybe it was because I was watching her lips so intently. Those lips could destroy men. Those lips could define you or slay you, her choice.
Her hand still sat in mine. It was like the planet was finally on our side and deciding to play nice. We’d outrun the Militia, multiple times, and I’d gotten the girl to finally relax and trust me. Things were going to be all right. I rubbed my thumb against hers and she rubbed hers against mine in retaliation before giving me this happy little look.
That’s all I could describe it as. Happy.
And I didn’t know why.
“These buildings are made of a graphite blend,” I told her and pointed up to the tallest one. “These are mainly assembly and production buildings for bots, and then the bots make the handhelds and techs. This is the oldest part of the planet, where they first settled. That’s why it looks so much grayer than the rest.”
She continued to look around in wonder. I looked, too. It was a strange look. The buildings and road both were a light gray. The buildings had no windows. It was just big walls of gray everywhere you looked. And since this was the oldest part of the planet, I knew what we were nearing. Pretty soon we’d be able to see Congress. I knew Soph had never seen Congress before. I wondered what she would think when she saw it. It was a sight, that was for sure. It was a big white house on the hill and all the members of Congress lived there with their families. For safety, they said, but I knew it was more than that. It was luxurious in there. It was something unattainable that we only saw on the monitors above the city. Confinement was underneath it. I always wondered if they did that on purpose, making the lowly people they put there stay under their feet.
I didn’t think that was coincidence.
I looked up into the cloudless sky’s horizon, searching for that building, that house, that I despised above all others. We’d read in our history that the Old World had a white house where their leader lived, too. I assumed they were trying to replicate that here with the monstrosity that sat on top of that hill.
It made me wonder if the Old World leaders could look at what the world was now, what they would say. Would they have done something to change the way the world was going? What would they have done differently?
“I’m hungry,” the twins said at the same time as they trotted close behind us.
“Jinx,” Roddy said.
“Owe me a coke,” Fletch fired back.
They both yelled at the same time, “The coke machine is out of order, kiss my butt and give me a quarter!”
“Dude!” they both yelled at the same time. Again. “No way!”
“What’s a coke?” Soph asked, her cute little nose scrunched in question. “Or a quarter?”
“I don’t know,” the twins answered, once again, at the same time. It was becoming so annoying. They both looked at each other;
their eyes held a prize we didn’t understand as they yelled, “Jinx! Owe me a coke!”
“Not this again,” I said. More like begged.
Sophelia rolled her eyes and tugged me away with those two going at it behind us. I stopped at a vendor to get a couple burritos. I imagined that Sophelia would like those. She watched me the entire time with this look on her face I couldn’t quite place. Wonder? Awe? Amazement? Or was that just my wishful thinking rearing it head?
“You’re still just grabbing things you want me to try.”
Aha! I was right. I grinned on the inside.
“Pssh. No.” I grinned. “Yes.”
She laughed softly and put her head on my shoulder. “Oh, Maxton. You’re going to ruin me.”
“That’s the plan,” I pressed my lips to her head and whispered.
She looked up at me, taking a deep breath, but saying nothing.
The twins had grabbed something disgusting and huge to eat and we started on our journey again. It wasn’t long before I started hearing singing. No. It wasn’t singing. It was Roddy.
“Yiggy yes yallin’, Snoop Doggy—”
Fletch slapped his hand over his brother’s mouth. “We’re not at the pod where you can let the profanity fly, little sib.”
“Little sib by four minutes,” he sneered behind Fletch’s hand before slapping it away.
“It. Counts,” he growled vehemently, and you knew they’d had the argument so many times before.
“One day they’ll invent a way to hatch twin babies at the same time and then this stupid argument will be moot.”
Fletch shook his head. “No, it won’t. I’ll still be four minutes older than you, doofus!”
Roddy looked like he was actually having to work it out in his head so I spoke up. “Yiggy yallin? What does that mean?”
“It’s from Snoop.”
“Snoop?” Soph questioned.
She wasn’t looking at them so she couldn’t see the red-hot-fire-of-a-thousand-suns glare she was getting at her back.
Chapter Fifteen
au·ton·o·mism – also known as bakuninism. A theory of revolution, advocating atheism, destruction of central government, and extreme individualism.
Sophelia
Snoop? I didn’t think my nose could scrunch any further. “Is that a drug? Are you guys on Hops?” I asked, halting in my tracks. If they were on drugs, we were going no further. Hops was a drug that made you impeccably high, so high that it lasted for a day or two, which was why people enjoyed it so much and paid top silver for it. I’d seen Rivers with it a time or two and seen the aftermath of it when he and one of his coitus minions would come out of the playroom all hopped up and being stupid. And saying random, dumb things that made fat lot of nothing sense. Like these two were right now.
“What?” he said, completely offended. I thought it was about the drugs but apparently not. “You don’t even know who Snoop Dogg is?” He looked at his twin. “Brother, the savior doesn’t even know who Snoop is!”
He put a hand on his shoulder. “I know. Take a breath.”
I looked at Maxton. “Are they messing with me right now? Is this a joke?”
“We don’t joke about the Snoop!” Roddy growled, and his twin grabbed his arm to hold him back.
“Yeah,” Fletch agreed, even as he held his brother back. “You’re the savior, but you still have to be respectful of the people who paved the way for our country.”
My eyes couldn’t have popped out any further. I heard an under-the-breath-snicker come from my left, and saw Maxton barely keeping it together. He looked almost in tears at the effort, in fact.
“Oh, you, too?” A small laugh busted through the seam of his lips, like it could no longer contain it. “Well then just tell me who or what this Snoop Schnauzer is and then we can get on with our lives.”
Maxton’s lips no longer held his laugh and he threw back his head in laughter. It was so amazing to watch that I almost missed that I was apparently in danger.
“Let me at her, Rod!” Fletch fought against his brother’s arm around his stomach. “I’ll teach her to dis the Snoop.”
“I can’t even with you guys!” I yelled in a huff.
Maxton finally came to my rescue. “Come on, guys, we’ve got to get serious.”
“Snoop Dog is serious!” he yelled back. “He’s a legend!”
“Elvis is a legend,” Maxton argued back.
“Who?” both the twins said at the same time.
I smacked my hands over my face. “I give,” I said through my fingers.
Maxton took a breath to calm himself from his laughing and asked, “You two are freaking hopeless. How do you know who Snoop Dogg is and not Elvis?”
Roddy once again answered, “Mom only allowed the classics in our home.”
Maxton laughed again and then shook his head and held up his hands in surrender, choosing to let it go. We had all begun to walk again and if I told you that when he took my hand with his that my gut wasn’t attacked with shooting stars, I would have been lying. I didn’t look up at him. I was happy to smile at our path.
But then I remembered. “Nobody ever did answer the Hops question.”
“Of course I’m not on Hops,” Fletch answered, “and neither is my brother. Not only could we not afford it, but we don’t put junk into our bodies. We’re very health-conscious.”
Maxton asked, “So the pancakes and sausage you devoured the other night were a fluke?”
“You don’t say no to pancakes and sausage, bruh.”
I felt my lips tip up just as music blared over the speakers. I started to panic before we heard the announcement that all residents were “invited” to attend the Exodus Day Celebration at North Beach. Invited was a loose term because no one was allowed not to come, except slaves. I’d never been to one before except when I was a kid, and I barely remembered them. Every zone of the planet had different celebrations. In the stacks they lit a massive bonfire in the square out of corn stalks, vines, and other plant leftovers that would burn. Everyone would gather around it and they would tell us about how they used to cut down and burn the trees and how they had paper to write on instead of screens. And then anyone who wanted to could get branded by the golden branding iron with the symbol for the Exodus on it. It was supposed to mean unity, but a big X just looked like a target to me. Not only would they stick the end in the fire, but it was made of gold, so it would burn you twice as badly. The person doing the branding had to wear protective gloves. A few people every year would step up and get the brand. They had turned it into a “stacks thing” more than an Exodus thing. The people in the stacks were the ones who worked in the mines, mostly. And they needed that unity, to feel the grip of brotherhood when they were down there fighting for their lives every day, even if it was Congress that had given them the idea.
We had no idea what the other zones did for their Exodus Day celebrations, we just knew it wasn’t the same as ours.
The sentries started to sweep in from the back of the street and people began to close their shops. I shook my head. Had it been a year already since the last time?
Maxton leaned in and whispered, “We won’t be able to get away with not going.” I nodded. I knew. “We’ll just have to go and wait it out. It just puts us back a little bit, that’s all.”
I turned to make sure the twins were following us. They were looking around like they’d never seen anything like it as we passed a guy making a sand castle so big, I didn’t know how it wasn’t falling over. We slowly made our way to the beach with everyone else. The street and buildings ended abruptly and light red sand sat waiting for everyone to walk out on.
When we got out on the beach, I saw they were having a sand castle contest, kids and adults alike. They all looked so focused as they molded and moved the red sand around into perfect little mounds, like it was the most important thing in the world as their family looked on.
Then I spotted a man with a smirk, watching them work, a whole ham
chop at his feet, taunting them with it. They wanted that for their family. It would have fed them for days. Or they could have sold it.
Some of the children had made sand castles closer to the waves and one of them was getting washed away by the break. A boy stood there watching the water take it away, like it was more than something tangible that was being taken away from him.
I looked around me. No one was happy. No one was delighted to be celebrating our Exodus from Earth. We went from one hell to another. And it made me angry that Congress made us pull this ruse, made us do this dance and pretend we were happy, made us all stand here and do their dirty work for them by making their sand castles and building their bonfires, acting like Exodus Day was something we were proud of.
Maybe at one time, we were, but this planet was no longer mine, nor was it was anyone else’s who wasn’t in Congress.
I felt fingers on mine and titled my head up to face Maxton. “What are you thinking so hard about?” he asked.
Gosh, he was so perceptive. It was unnerving.
“Injustice,” I told him truthfully.
He nodded thoughtfully. “On a day like today, how could you not?” He nudged his head toward the kids building the castles like their last meal depended on it. “I mean look at them. Everybody working so hard, fighting over one meal, one piece of meat.”
“Yeah,” Fletch butted in on my right, “but look at that thing.”
Maxton smiled, shaking his head. “So go build a castle and win it.”
“Nah. I don’t want to put anyone here to shame.”
“What did your zone do to celebrate?” I asked Maxton, but Fletch butted in again.
“They would do bot racing. And sometimes, they would put hurdle boots on the robots.” He laughed. “Funniest thing you’ve. Ever. Seen!”
I looked at Maxton for his answer and he just shook his head.
“Tattoos.” His smile was small. “Out on the docks and in the market district, we would do face and arm paintings and tattoos. If you were the new guy in a ship crew, they’d hold you down and make you get one.” He scoffed. “I’ve seen plenty of grown men’s behinds that way. That’s just something you can’t unsee.”
